Inclusion: A Defining Definition?

Abstract

Within this article the definition of inclusion is critically explored in relation to the previous New Labour government's educational policy of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This exploration demonstrates that inclusion rather than being located in terms of equality should actually be observed as a complex ideological construct which legitimised the process of the subordination and domination of vulnerable groups in our society. In the article it is argued that whilst supposing to ensure the presence of all children, on their terms, in mainstream schools, inclusion in this guise only insinuated itself in-the-place-of integration and thereby operated as a continuous and homogeneous reparation and modification of presence in the representation of children with special educational needs and/or disabilities. The article concludes therefore that inclusion became located as a ‘guise of truth’ which employed a cultural cloak of equality to create double binds where performativity was pitched against presence, standards against segregation and ablism against absence.